Remember this song, by Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel?
It first turned up for general public consumption on THE BASEMENT TAPES (1975) by Bob Dylan and The Band…an album of bootlegs recorded in the basement recording studio of Big Pink, in Saugerties, New York, in 1967, during the period Dylan was recovering from his 1966 motorcycle accident.
I just picked up the re-mastering of The Band’s first album, MUSIC FROM BIG PINK, and an outtake of “Katie’s Been Gone” is included, which made me start thinking about it again for the first time in years.
When I first heard it, as a teenager, I thought it was a lovely little song about a man whose girl has left town and travelled somewhere else, leaving him alone and wondering if he’ll ever see her again. He obviously loves her. And, even though she assures him she’ll be back, it seems equally obvious that she’s gone for good.
(sob)
Okay. About fifteen years ago I was driving around backroads in Downeast Maine late at night, and the tune came up on the cassette I was playing. I may have been drunk. I may have been stoned. But suddenly I visualized Garth Hudson in the starring role. (Garth is The Band’s genius organ player. He looks like he spends his time shovelling shit when he’s not at the keyboard. He’s the big guy with the hayseed beard on the cover of that famous 1969 “brown album,” titled simply THE BAND. Even in 1969, he was balding.)
The picture grew bigger…I saw him standing by the mailbox on some backroads RFD, with a wilted bunch of posies in his hand. Wearing overalls and big ol’ stomp boots coated with cow manure. This pathetic look on his face as he wonders if Katie “has found someone new.”
Meanwhile, I’m seeing old Katie down on Haight-Ashbury, or in the East Village, her pigtails ironed out into a Joan Baez ‘do, wearing a peasant skirt and a Grateful Dead tee-shirt and smoking a big ol’ joint while ecstatically screwing the lead guitarist of some crappy rock band.
In short, I can’t listen to this song anymore without busting into a fit of the giggles.
